Drinking 1 pint of water changed reading…

Hi Joe
Did you confirm the unusually high reading by doing a second test?

shantijoe said:

I did the 2nd test 1 hour after the 1st having drunk the pint of water.
I hope that's clear?
joe

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HI Joe, there is a 15% inaccuracy allowed for in blood tsting meters, plus it's all too easy to get a single error on a blood test if your hands aren't 100% clean (believe me I've done that many times).

Though water will flush out sugar through your kidneys I think that only happens if your bg is above 10mmol/L.

Though the dawn phenomena can push morning levels up (liver helpfully dumps out early morning sugar) I'd be more inclined to think that the 8 was a meter error. Maybe do an immediate second test if it happens again?

Joe when you get a reading that seems unusually high or low its advisable to repeat the test straight away.
Weird readings are quite common, usually caused by a faulty strip or something on the fingers giving a false result, a repeat test would have confirmed that high level.
Even if the result was accurate I doubt that the water made too much difference. Blood sugars can rise and fall quite quickly especially when you take the +/- 15% accuracy of the meters into account.
Your 8.6 could have actually been somewhere around 7 and the 5.2 closer to 6 so it's possible that your levels really only dropped just over 1mmol in the hour between tests.
Not trying to put you off drinking water, good hydration is important but I don't think you have discovered a glucose lowering trick.
Wouldn't it be great if we could eat pizza then drink water and just flush it out, I suppose it doesn't hurt to dream.